The Value of Solitude

Delia Ungureanu

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Chapter 13 The Value of Solitude

In: World Literature in and for Pandemic Times

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Delia Ungureanu

Delia Ungureanu
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Type:: Chapter

Pages:: 183–201

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004744622_014

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Abstract

Confinement can present itself in terms of loss and deprivation, but it can also enable us to rediscover the moral value of solitude as a necessary condition for the birth of revolutionary ideas that can change the world. World literature plays an important part in this process, with its self-reflective power that allows for a “detached engagement” with the world at large, as David Damrosch has posited in What Is World Literature? This conception of solitude as a paradoxical condition for the birth of revolutionary ideas that can change the world goes back as far as the 12th Dynasty Egyptian text The Debate Between a Man and His Soul, long before there ever was a “Western tradition” that goes from Stoicism to Montaigne, Virginia Woolf and beyond. This essay will tell the secret story of one of the circulation routes of the value of solitude as key to participation and revolutionary intervention in a world in crisis.

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World Literature in and for Pandemic Times

Series: Textxet: Studies in Comparative Literature, Volume: 110

E-Book ISBN:: 9789004744622

Publisher:: Brill

Print Publication Date:: 08 Oct 2025

Subjects
- Literature and Cultural Studies

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African Studies	Education	Media Studies
American Studies	History	Middle East and Islamic Studies
Ancient Near East and Egypt	Human Rights and Humanitarian Law	Musicology
Art History	International Law	Philosophy
Asian Studies	International Relations	Religious Studies
Biblical Studies	Jewish Studies	Slavic and Eurasian Studies
Biology	Languages and Linguistics	Social Sciences
Book History and Cartography	Life Sciences	Theology and World Christianity
Classical Studies	Literature and Cultural Studies

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Chapter 13 The Value of Solitude

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World Literature in and for Pandemic Times

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